April 7 : Me Sainted Mither

[O'Blivion]

April 7

Ah, this is an important day for me. It's my Mom's birthday.

My Mom, Marian Sowers Mertz, was born this day in 1920, and passed away in 2002. She instilled
in me a love of art, music, and literature, as well as an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. She learned
to use her first computer, and wrote a book (the true story of a local murder in 1900), after the age of
80. There is some talk now of making her book into a film.

She gave up a promising career in music (she was a classical pianist) to raise a family. She left my dad,
who had become a beligerent alcoholic, in 1970, and became a respected District Magistrate. Her home
was a gathering place for all of the most interesting people in the area - I always called her the Gertrude
Stein of Mifflintown.

She and I shared many of the same tastes in the arts, not least of which was a love of the Pogues. Although
her surname and married name were of German extraction, her lifelong geneological studies centered on
tracing her Irish ancestry. She gave me the middle name "Brennan" in honor of our Irish forbears.

So happy birthday, Mom. I love you, and I miss you everyday.


This is also the birthday of Billie Holiday, one of the most sublime natural talents America has ever produced.
Born this day in 1915, she recorded dozens of sides from the 1930s until the 1950s, all of which are absolutely
amazing - from the perfect, horn-like tone ofher youthful voice, to the tragic, incredibly moving last recordings
of a lost soul, ravaged by drugs and drink, but still capable of great art.

I've been listening to my Mom's copy of Billie's complete Decca recordings
this morning - "Don't Explain", "The Blues Are Brewing", "Lover Man",
"Good Morning Heartache". Later I'll break out the 78s and listen to
"Fine and Mellow" and the harrowing 1939 classic, "Strange Fruit"

It really doesn't get any deeper than that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs


Born this day in 1920, Maestro Ravi Shankar.

My Mom and I used to listen to Ravi in the 60s, (we got Three Ragas out of the local library) but she
never knew that they shared the exact same birthday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLZ-zW9Ti4


With Hari Georgeson in 1967


On this day in 1805, Beethoven's Third Symphony (Eroica)
was performedfor the first time. My Mom loved Beethoven.
This was the first symphony I remember her turning me on
to.


http://youtu.be/y0aZrVsEmA8




On this date in 1938, LSD was first synthesized. Nope, my Mom never did acid
(that I know of) so I can't relate this event to her.

http://youtu.be/CSmu_JDtzVM


On this date in 2003 US forces captured Baghdad.

They were greeted as liberators and everyone lived happily ever
after.

Also Born This Day:

1770 – William Wordsworth, who wrote:

A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting
with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of
the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce
it to a state of almost savage torpor.




1922 – Mongo Santamaria

http://youtu.be/yPlfoXogtdI


1931 – Daniel Ellsberg, who said:

We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were
right.





1939 – Francis Ford Coppola


http://youtu.be/EPLAnJ8Xozk



1939 – Sir David Frost

http://youtu.be/g2jKFZVIQv0



1960 – Buster Douglas



1965 - Alison Lapper

Alison Lapper MBE is an English artist who was born
without arms. She uses photography, digital imaging
and painting to, as she says, question physical
normality and beauty, using herself as a subject.
She paints with her mouth. One particular influence
is the sculpture Venus de Milo, due to the physical
similarities between the idealized classical female
statue and Lapper's own body. She has taken part
in various British exhibitions, including in the Royal
Festival Hall. She is a member of the Association
of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists of the World
(AMFPA). In May 2003, Lapper was awarded an
MBE for her services to art.

She posed for Marc Quinn for the sculpture Alison
Lapper Pregnant (above). Made of Carrara marble,
it shows Lapper nude and heavily pregnant. It
occupied the fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar
Square between September 2005 and late 2007.


Died This Day:

1739 - Dick Turpin



1891 - P.T. Barnam, who said:

Money is in some respects life's fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a
terrible master.



1947 - Henry Ford, who said:

It is well enough that people of the nation do
not understand our banking and monetary system,
for if they did, I believe there would be a
revolution before tomorrow morning.



1955 - Theda Bara

http://youtu.be/cCNHjJ8Prz4

[O'Blivion]

Assassinated This Day:

Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Hughes McGee, PC, (April 13, 1825 – April 7, 1868) was an Irish
Nationalist, journalist, and a Father of Canadian confederation. He fought for the
development of Irish and Canadian national identities that would transcend their
component groups. He is, to date, the only Canadian victim of political assassination
at the federal level.


Widely known as D'Arcy McGee, he was born on April 13th, 1825 in Carlingford, Ireland, and raised as a Roman Catholic. From his mother, the daughter of a Dublin bookseller, he learned the history of Ireland, which later influenced his writing and political activity. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Wexford, where his father was employed by the coast guard. In Wexford he attended a local hedge school, where the teacher, Michael Donnelly, fed his hunger for knowledge and where he learned of the long history of English occupation and Irish rebellion, including the more recent uprising of 1798. In 1842 at age 16 he sailed from Wexford harbour aboard the brig Leo, bound for the United States via Quebec, Canada. He soon found work as assistant editor of Patrick Donahoe's Boston Pilot, a Catholic newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts. A few years later he returned to Ireland where he became politically active and edited the nationalist newspaper The Nation. His support for and his involvement in the Irish Confederation and Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 resulted in a warrant for his arrest. McGee escaped the country by steamship and returned to the United States.


In the U.S., he achieved prominence
in Irish American circles and founded
and edited the New York Nation and
the American Celt (Boston). He grew
disillusioned with democracy and the
American republic, and emigrated to
Canada in 1857. McGee remained a
persistent critic of the U.S., of
American institutions, and of
the American way of life. He
accused the U.S. of hostile and
expansionist motives toward
Canada and of desiring to spread
its republican ideas over all of
North America (see: Manifest Destiny).


In 1857 he set up the publication of the New Era in
Montreal, Quebec. In his editorials and pamphlets he
attacked the influence of the Orange Order and defended
the Irish Catholic right to representation in the assembly.
In terms of economics he promoted modernization, calling
for extensive economic development by means of railway
construction, the fostering of immigration, and the
application of a high protective tariff to encourage
manufacturing. Politically active, he advocated a new
nationality in Canada, to escape the sectarianism of
Ireland. In 1858, he was elected to the Legislative
Assembly of the Province of Canada and worked for
the creation of an independent Canada.

McGee became the minister of agriculture, immigration,
and statistics in the Conservative government which was
formed in 1863.



Moderating his radical Irish nationalist views, McGee
denounced the Fenian Brotherhood in America that
advocated a forcible takeover of Canada from Britain
by the United States. Following the Confederation of
Canada, McGee was elected to the 1st Canadian
Parliament in 1867 as a Liberal-Conservative
representing Montreal.


On November 4, 1867 McGee delivered an oration titled "The
Mental Outfit of the New Dominion." The address surveyed the
literary status of Canada on the eve of the first Dominion
Parliament. McGee's views were a combination of Tory
principle, revelation, and empirical method. He suggested
a national literature inspired by the creativity and ingenuity
of the Canadian people.

Assassination


On April 7, 1868, McGee participated in a parliamentary debate
that went on past midnight. Afterward he walked to his Sparks
St. boarding house at 2:00 AM. While trying to enter the boarding
house (the door was locked from the inside and McGee was waiting
for the landlady to open the door), McGee was purportedly
assassinated by Patrick J. Whelan as the door was being opened.


He was given a state funeral in Ottawa and interred in a crypt at the
Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal.



McGee's mausoleum, 1927



The government of Canada's Thomas D'Arcy
McGee Building stands near the site of the
assassination.






Patrick J. Whelan, a Fenian sympathizer and a Catholic, was accused, tried, convicted, and
hanged for the crime. Whelan was hanged with an audience of 5,000 people. This was the
last public hanging of Canada.





Impact of the Assassination

The assassination was an important historical marker in Irish
Canadian history. The reasons for Fenian influence among the
Canadian Catholic Irish was powerful in the 1860s included
McGee's failure to rally moderate Irish support before his death,
and the fact that no convincing moderate leader replaced
McGee after his death. In addition the Catholic bishops
proved unable to control the Fenians in either the U.S.
or Canada; a final factor explaining the influence of
the Fenians was the courting of the Irish Catholic vote
by Canadian non-Catholic politicians.


Behind all these reasons was Canadian fear of the 'Green Ghost':
American Fenianism. After 1870, however, the failure of American
Fenian raids into Canada, followed by the collapse of American
Fenianism, finally led to the decline of Canadian Fenian power.